


Old Berlin

by ThatBirdManOverThere



Category: Original Work
Genre: F/M, Original work - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-07
Updated: 2017-06-07
Packaged: 2018-11-10 04:33:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,020
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11119998
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThatBirdManOverThere/pseuds/ThatBirdManOverThere
Summary: A story in Berlin following an anthropomorphic wolf and fox couple as they battle a dangerous foe while travelling to the old Reichstag building.





	Old Berlin

City - Old Berlin  
Date - N/A

 

The landscape was barren. There were pieces of rubbish weaving themselves mindlessly between cars as a wind calmly whipped them up into the air. Shou, a short grey wolf, stood between two large buses, and made some sort of a bird call, disadvantaged by her long snout. Shou cringed, hoping that there weren't any Sentinels around.

She stepped as quietly as possible into one of the buses and ducked behind a seat near the front. A few minutes after her own call, she heard an owl hooting from down the street. She stood up to look out the window, still wary of the large mechanical beasts that stalked her. She glanced over to where she heard the call of her good friend Adalard, and was relieved to see an oddly large fox leaning out of a store window.

Shou waved at the red fox, and he briefly returned the gesture, before beckoning her towards him with a finger over the end of his snout, signalling silence. She nodded and left the bus, quietly creeping over to the store. When she approached the halfway point in the road, she began to feel like she was being watched, which wasn't an unfamiliar feeling for her by that point, but it still made her spine tingle, from the base of her neck to the end of her bushy tail.

She continued to travel down the street to where Adalard was, before hearing the quiet, yet impossibly loud, groaning of metal against metal from far away. A Sentinel. Adalard heard this too, and rushed out of the store window to grab Shou. She looked down the end of the street, where the sound came from, and was horrified by the huge beast's face as it steadily made its way into the street. It's face was made up of four giant mandibles, all lined with what seems like thousands of little teeth, and one eye in the middle of it's head, made up of hundreds of smaller eyes expanding outwards from the centre of its jaws. It was made entirely of metal, excluding its eyes, which looked more like lenses, but were still terrifying.

Shou charged into the building behind Adalard, with only the slightest hesitation when jumping through a broken window. She dodged an expensive looking jacket with a quick glance back over her shoulder, she leapt over a shoe testing counter and slid through a small hole in the wall opposite to the entrance leading into another shop. The wall that Shou had just slipped through suddenly burst into a bigger hole as a red figure stumbled into the room, already shaking the dust off of his hoodie and looking for an exit.

The rumbling approach of the Sentinel reminds the two that they should find somewhere it can't get to. Adalard suggested the old Reichstag building, and Shou happily agreed, mostly because she would follow him anywhere, but still asked why they would go there. "There's a jammer or something there, the Sentinels can't get past it, I think." Whispered Adalard, not wanting to reveal their location to the horror that came ever closer to them. The truth was, he could have yelled at that moment, and it still wouldn't have heard them over it's own grating sounds unless it weren't moving, in which case it's echolocation system would jump-start for operations where listening is essential

Adalard couldn't help but notice how bad their predicament really was, knowing that the Sentinel could step on the place and they would be dead almost immediately. There were rumours that there are people inside these beasts, but those stories have only been told by a drunk scout and three small children, who also said they met one face to face. He didn't get to finish that thought as a ginormous claw landed right by the window of the other store, shattering all the remaining glass in the windows. The pair of canines were surprised by the sudden development, and stared at the titanium-lithium mix blade through the rather fox-shaped hole in the wall.

It stopped. The couple stopped. Everything seemed to stop all at once.

The roof then decided at that moment to cave in, possibly from a leakage in a water pipe in the ceiling, which caused the building to be too heavy for it's own support. The huge claw from outside the store’s window suddenly moved out of sight and crashed through the already caved-in roof, making the hole so much bigger. The Sentinels paw hosted 3 large toes for balancing, and all of those toes hefted a giant metal claw, which were each longer than Adalard and Shou combined. The couple were then not able to see anything after that, as there was a huge cloud of dust in the room that they were in. There was a hissing sound far above through the hole in the roof, and a sound like hail bouncing off of the back of the Sentinel. Something hard hit the ground in front of the two travellers, and even more dust was thrown around.

Shou slowly stretched her arm to the side, searching for some comfort from Adalard in her dying moments as she stares into the brown abyss of the dust around her while it begins to settle. An ominous purple began glowing from where the hard thud had sounded. It was in the simple shape of a rod, and its illumination of the room revealed a creature, not unlike Shou entirely, but without a tail or snout, clad completely in the same material of the Sentinels armor. Adalard, whom was clutching Shou’s hand quite tightly, began growling at the oddly shaped being in a rather feral stance, with his chest facing the ground and his right arm behind him.

~ I've been looking for you.~

It spoke to them, but it was not like any ordinary form of communication. They heard it’s voice, but it didn’t seem to actually create any noise itself, as if it were speaking only in their minds. Shou looked at Adalard when his growling hailed, and he glanced towards her until their eyes met, and they realised that it was no mammal.

It began strutting towards them while swinging it's weapon in a figure eight motion around it. Adalard let go of Shou's hand and grabbed a large, frilly dress, and threw it at the Sentinel. It passed it's rod through the silky material with barely an additional flick of it's wrist, causing the dress to catch fire as its mass floats to either side of the Sentinel.

"RUN!" Adalard suddenly yipped, gripping Shou's hand once again, but she didn't need him to do that before she was sprinting out the other side of the store towards a window. She quickly realised that her fox was not matching her pace, and she glanced behind her to make sure he was following. He was slightly behind because he was throwing the largest objects he could lift into the path of the Sentinel, whom barely looked at the objects before they were suddenly in more than one piece.

Shou suddenly hits something hard, and turned her head in time to see the ground rising towards her snout. She hit the carpet hard. it was soggy, and smelt bad. She turned onto her back, not caring for her tail, and realised that Adalard was attempting to fight the sentinel with a glass lamp, and the Sentinel seemed to be taken aback that it's own weapon did not break it, stumbling slightly before it regained it's posture.

Adalard swung his makeshift spear in an attempt to disarm the Sentinel, but he instead ended up swinging too hard, and the lamp was several metres to his left.

"Oh, well." was all Adalard said before his arm was neatly sliced off of his shoulder. Shou broke her silence, and screamed for him. It was more like a gurgle, considering she usually couldn't speak at all. Adalard only realised a few seconds later that his arm wasn't in it's usual place, which is attached to his shoulder, and turned to face the Sentinel and snarled.

~Stop fighting.~

The voice was there again, and Adalard decided that, even without weapons, he could probably still hurt it. He swung his right arm around in a fist towards the Sentinels face, and was partially surprised to see that it actually made contact. His hand hurt a lot, but the Sentinel staggered backwards from the force of the punch that went into the armored visor of it's head.

Shou saw an opportunity, and lunged for the lamp that Adalard had thrown aside moments before. The sentinel had dropped it's weapon, which was making parts of the carpet on fire, and was currently on the floor, attempting to get onto it's knees. Shou cracked the glass pole onto it's head, and it fell flat onto the ground once more, with shards of the improvised weapon around it. She glanced over to the purple hued rod, and saw Adalard picking it up, staring at the stunned Sentinel with hatred in his eye. 

He dropped the weapon through the Sentinel, and it ungracefully dropped to the now burning carpet for a final time. It lay still. The two canines stared at it for a full minute, before Adalard suddenly collapsed.

In the last few seconds previous to Adalard crumpling to the ground, he thought about how hard life is going to be without a left arm. He then thought about the fact that he didn't have an arm.

Shou rushed towards him, forgetting about the creature a few metres away and the fire that was even closer. She hovered her hands above him, unsure of what to do. She became lightheaded from gasping, and tried to pick Adalard up. He was too heavy, the way he was shaped, so Shou attempted dragging him, which worked, to some degree. Shou became increasingly panicked as the fire that had built inside the store quickly creeped up on them, and she pulled on Adalard in a final struggle to get to the window.

She finally reached the window, and with nothing else able to break the glass, she had to try launching into it herself. she was successful, with a few minor cuts streaking her fur. She hauled Adalard through the window, mindful of the broken glass underneath him, and took him to the other side of the street.

She lay his head on her lap, remembering of how she dreamt of him being where he was when she was younger. She checked his arm, which had fortunately not been entirely slashed off, and noticed that the wound had been cauterised by the Sentinels weapon.

They lay there for a while, before Adalard began wiggling. He opened his eyes slowly, unsure of where he would be. Now realising the soft, yet bony feeling of her legs was what he was resting on, he snuggled the back of his head further into her lap, surprising her. "So... Should we move on to the reichstag soon?" Adalard said after a few minutes. Shou looked down at him for several seconds, before she placed her palms over his snout and covered his eyes with her fingers. "I'll take that as a no, then."

The wolf and fox couple stayed there until the fire in the store became quite large, and was warming there skin. Without a map, finding the reichstag building would be difficult, unless they could find a rooftop somewhere. They left the street in search a a tall building that looked reliable, so they don't have to worry about more falling buildings than they already have in the past.

After finding a suitable office building, they traversed up the tall concrete stairway to find a floor without any windows, but overlooked a large section of the city. There was a clearing in the buildings for an oval, which was out the front of the reichstag building, which they could now see.

They knew were they were going. They could be safe once again.

**Author's Note:**

> This was originally for an English assignment I got a while back, and some people liked my story, so I thought I would post it on Ao3 as my first story. Maybe I can make more later...


End file.
